


Take Care

by failsafe



Category: White Collar
Genre: First Impressions, First Meetings, Multi, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 06:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9709061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: Elizabeth finally meets the man her husband can't stop thinking about, sort of.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this fic! It's sort of last minute, but I had the thought in mind and couldn't quite let it go.

Peter is asleep when the phone rings. Elizabeth cannot remember the last time she was the last one to go to bed. Well, maybe that isn't true. She can't remember the last time she was the last one to bed when Peter made it home on time and wasn't out well past when he had any reasonable expectation of her waiting up. She hasn't said anything about it. Not yet. She knows that his job is important to him, and a part of that dedication is why she married him. 

That is what she tells herself on the occasions when his fixation on his latest case drives her a little nuts. 

There are everyday cases that occasionally center his attention at home, but more and more Peter is utterly captivated by this man who eludes every attempt to catch him. It has only gotten worse since Peter saw him face to face. Neal Caffrey has taken to  _ taunting _ him now. And Peter has taken the bait.

It's wearing him out, so when the phone rings, she is just hoping they won't try his cell next. 

There is a soft beep as she presses the  _ TALK  _ button. She holds the cordless phone to her ear and starts to tilt her head to steady it with her shoulder. 

“Hello?” she asks, a rote, friendly greeting in spite of the fact that it was pushing midnight. 

“... Hello,” comes the somewhat hesitant reply on the other end. The voice isn't one that Elizabeth immediately recognizes, and her eyebrows knit together as if they might express some of her confusion into the silence that carried into the mouthpiece. “You must be Elizabeth,” he says, sounding more interested in a novel way than in an “I'm-hiding-in-your-closet” way. It still sends cool goosebumps down her arms. 

Elizabeth clears her throat to announce that she is still on the other line, but she walks further away from the stairwell before she speaks again. She thinks about going onto the back patio but drops her hand from the doorknob and steps into the kitchen instead, trying to exercise some measure of sensibility. She has never gotten the impression that the man she thinks this is happens to be dangerous, but she knows she would never forgive herself if Peter had to deal with the fallout of her underestimating that. 

Standing in her kitchen, she feels a bit like she had on the phone with a boy from high school, trying not to let her parents hear. She also, still, feels a bit like the expendable girl in a horror movie. Most of all, though, she feels like herself – the wife of an FBI agent who is, day by day, getting in a little more over his head. Only, it isn't the way that Hughes at the office would notice. It is the way only she notices.

“Is this Neal?” she asks, plainly, when she finds her voice in a quiet place. She feels a little burst of warm air from a vent feeding into their kitchen and feels a little less like the smooth, youthful voice on the other end of the line is likely to be a frat boy wearing a _Scream_ mask, after all. 

“Yes,” Neal replies, without hesitation but drawing out the syllable a little more than is necessary. She can tell he is considering it. 

“Neal Caffrey,” she says, for good measure, as if it will make him more aware of the fact that she knows about him – that Peter has told her. 

“Guilty as charged,” Neal says on the other line, wry and taunting. 

Elizabeth isn't sure whether she should be offended or not. She feels of two minds – part of her going cold and the other part of her finding it a little bit funny. 

“I hear that's not all you're guilty of,” she remarks, conversationally. She hopes that the phone in her house doesn't happen to be tapped, and Peter would never abide it if it were. Still, if she can easily coax something out of this guy while he's surprised, she might save Peter a lot of time, energy, and draw him back to earth a little bit. 

“I've never been convicted of anything,” Neal points out smoothly, not missing a beat. 

There is a moment of silence as Elizabeth readjusts. She wonders what Neal is doing on the other end of the line. Where he is. More importantly, why he is calling – her, her husband, here, at their house. 

“What do you want, Neal?” she asks, not bothering to quibble with the _how_ and going straight to the _why_. She can hear a smooth, elegant intelligence in his tone that she thinks must not be her imagination for all Peter has built him up and for all he hasn't needed to. 

The silence lingers long enough that she wonders if Neal has somehow abandoned his post while leaving the line open. She wonders if it is a payphone or a prepaid cell – a burner, she's heard them called. She wonders if he is on a house phone somewhere, with someone he knows and goes home to. She has no way of telling. Wherever Neal is, it is very quiet, and after a moment she makes out the sound of his exhaling a little more heavily than his last few breaths. He is still there. 

“I was calling to talk to Peter,” he says, as if he were an old friend. 

An old friend. She wonders how a person accounts for that, if they're living their life trying to stay a step ahead of the FBI. 

“Well,” Elizabeth says, a momentary filler word as she thinks it through – how to respond, “it's pretty late, Neal.” She settles on a tone that makes this sound almost normal, though she has never had to deal with this particular situation before. “He's asleep right now.” 

“Oh,” Neal says, a little higher in pitch. She can imagine his eyebrows shooting up his face, and she tries to imagine what exactly _Neal Caffrey_ must look like. She has never had Peter describe him to her. Not yet. She cannot quite imagine a face to go with the voice she hears, except that he is young and – for some reason – probably a little pale. “Well, I'd say to tell him I called, but it might be a conflict of interest if I gave you a callback number.” 

“So you're telling me it's going to do me no good to star-sixty-nine you?” Elizabeth remarks dryly. 

“Afraid not,” Neal says. She detects a certain wavering in his voice, and some part of her wants to press at it. She doesn't know what exactly drives her to do it. 

“What did you need to talk to him about?” she asks, conversational and perhaps optimistic still. 

“Nothing really,” Neal says. 

“That's never true,” Elizabeth chides. 

“Well, I might have needed his professional expertise about something. You never know,” he says. Then, he clears his throat. His breath hisses again, and she imagines that maybe, somehow, it is in response to pain – not agony, but minor, nagging hurt in the body of someone who isn't used to such pain. She wonders if he is conning her as they speak, but then: “I'll try again sometime.” 

It sounds like a promise, but when Elizabeth starts to speak again, Neal gently tuts in with a click of his tongue and interrupts her. 

“Have a good night, Elizabeth.” 

Then, unremarkably, there is a dial tone ringing back into her ear from the phone. 

 


End file.
